Journey Church

It's a good thing I have this thing for myself and not for my friends, otherwise the lack of response would be kind of depressing...

That having been said, I am actually going to make a serious post before this blog goes to rot.

I went to Journey Church on Sunday with my roommate. The following is my account of what happened and my reaction to it. I'm not trying to offend anyone, I'm just trying to figure out my thoughts.

It was overwhelming when I walked in, I had to shake the hands of four greeter-people on my way in. The church meets in an old supermarket, so when you walk in it's just this large open space with concrete floors and high ceilings, not surprisingly, much like a supermarket. Dozens of people are meandering around and there's an amazing amount of food sitting out, waiting to be eaten as well as big tubs of ice with soda and water in them, much like you might find on the Walker-Adams Mall the first couple of days after move-in. I'm not usually a fan of big groups, especially when I don't really know anyone. Strike one for Journey church. We went into the sanctuary and were immediately assaulted by loud music while we found seats. There were a lot of families there, more than I was expecting. Since most of the students are gone for the summer, it wasn't nearly as packed as it normally would have been. I enjoyed the worship mostly, but the lights swirling around and flashing in my face really didn't make it easy to concentrate. And the sermon being punctuated often by the phrase "the sweet spot of success" and being "in the zone" in reference to God didn't exactly resonate with me too well. All in all, I felt myself judging a lot. The pastor essentially talked about being successful in God and among other things, said that God wants to bless us financially and implied that if that's not the case then we might not be where we should be. I guess I never really associate financial "success" as something that I am promised as a Christian. There was a lot of stuff that I found myself really cringing at. Some of that I think was justified in disagreeing with, but I know that some of it was not. I tend to be a prideful and a judgmental person, coupled with some stubbornness. I like to think that I'm am right, and that being the case, I have the right to look down on other people who disagree with me. That's not true, and I shouldn't be doing it. In addition, there is not always a strictly "right" or "wrong" answer with some issues in Christianity. Being an engineer and used to working with empirical data, that's what I like to rely on. Problem is, that's rarely available when you're talking about faith. That frustrates me a lot sometimes, because evaluating subjective information and making decisions based on that information is not my strong point. As a result, I tend to just pick a side that seems right and stake that out as my viewpoint without always searching the scriptures for truth. It's easier to read a book and have someone tell me what they think is right that to try to determine it for myself. It's one of the things that frusterates me most about myself.

So, I find myself wondering, "why did I react so badly to Journey?" Part of me reacted against the fact that it was not an intellectual church, as I've become accustomed to over the past three and a half years. Another similar problem I had with it was in its seeming desire to make church exciting and attractive. I'm not saying we should try to make church boring on purpose, but I also think that we have more mental capacity than a 20 minute, 3 point, fill-in-the-blank sermon with flashing lights in the background. I honestly think a lot of this is just my pride, my "holier than thou" attitude if you will, but there were some things that were said that I wasn't sure how scriptural they were. I don't know.

All that being said, I almost want to go back. Sometimes I think that we should all be going to churches that we would never expect to go to and never thought we would fit in at, just to challenge our beliefs and make us think. I'd like to go back to Journey simply for the fact that it raised questions in my mind. I couldn't just sit back and agree with what was being said. I reacted against it, but it made me think. My mind said, "no, that's wrong." It made me want to search the scriptures to find the truth. Anything that can do that for me is a good thing.